Even though it is the most widely-spoken language in the world, the English language has a reputation among its learners for being difficult due to containing many words with irregular spelling. Through this analysis, WordsRated looks at the most frequently misspelled words according to the Oxford English Corpus and identifies trends associated with these.
- In total, the list of most commonly misspelled words contains 108 words, some of which are variations on other words in the list.
- Of the analyzed words, misspelled words range from 4 letters to 13 letters in length.
- Incorrect spelling of 9-letter words were most common (21.30%), followed by 10-letter words (20.37%) and 8-letter words (18.52%).
- Based on the words given, the most common starting letter for a misspelled word is the letter “P” (10.19%).
- This is followed by the letters “A”, “C” and “F” (9.26% each).
- However, the last letter of a misspelled word is most likely to be “E” (24.07%).
- “Y” (17.59%), “N” and “T” (10.19% each) follow.
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| Word | First letter | Last letter | Word length | Common misspelling |
| Accommodate | A | E | 11 | Accomodate |
| Accommodation | A | N | 13 | Accomodation |
| Achieve | A | E | 7 | Acheive |
| Across | A | S | 6 | Accross |
| Aggressive | A | E | 10 | Agressive |
| Aggression | A | N | 10 | Agression |
| Apparently | A | Y | 10 | Apparantly |
| Appearance | A | E | 10 | Appearence |
| Argument | A | T | 8 | Arguement |
| Assassination | A | N | 13 | Assasination |
| Basically | B | Y | 9 | Basicly |
| Beginning | B | G | 9 | Begining |
| Believe | B | E | 7 | Beleive/Belive |
| Bizarre | B | E | 7 | Bizzare |
| Business | B | S | 8 | Buisness |
| Calendar | C | R | 8 | Calender |
| Caribbean | C | N | 9 | Carribean |
| Cemetery | C | Y | 8 | Cemetary |
| Chauffeur | C | R | 9 | Chauffer |
| Colleague | C | E | 9 | Collegue |
| Coming | C | G | 6 | Comming |
| Committee | C | E | 9 | Commitee |
| Completely | C | Y | 10 | Completly |
| Conscious | C | S | 9 | Concious |
| Curiosity | C | Y | 9 | Curiousity |
| Definitely | D | Y | 10 | Definately |
| Dilemma | D | A | 7 | Dilemna |
| Disappear | D | R | 9 | Dissapear |
| Disappoint | D | T | 10 | Dissapoint |
| Ecstasy | E | Y | 7 | Ecstacy |
| Embarrass | E | S | 9 | Embarass |
| Environment | E | T | 11 | Enviroment |
| Existence | E | E | 9 | Existance |
| Fahrenheit | F | T | 10 | Farenheit |
| Familiar | F | R | 8 | Familar |
| Finally | F | Y | 7 | Finaly |
| Fluorescent | F | T | 11 | Florescent |
| Foreign | F | N | 7 | Foriegn |
| Foreseeable | F | E | 11 | Forseeable |
| Forty | F | Y | 5 | Fourty |
| Forward | F | D | 7 | Foward |
| Friend | F | D | 6 | Freind |
| Further | F | R | 7 | Futher |
| Gist | G | T | 4 | Jist |
| Glamorous | G | S | 9 | Glamourous |
| Government | G | T | 10 | Goverment |
| Guard | G | D | 5 | Gaurd |
| Happened | H | D | 8 | Happend |
| Harass | H | S | 6 | Harrass |
| Harassment | H | T | 10 | Harrassment |
| Honorary | H | Y | 8 | Honourary |
| Humorous | H | S | 8 | Humourous |
| Idiosyncrasy | I | Y | 12 | Idiosyncracy |
| Immediately | I | Y | 11 | Immediatly |
| Incidentally | I | Y | 12 | Incidently |
| Independent | I | T | 11 | Independant |
| Interrupt | I | T | 9 | Interupt |
| Irresistible | I | E | 12 | Irresistable |
| Knowledge | K | E | 9 | Knowlege |
| Liaise | L | E | 6 | Liase |
| Liaison | L | N | 7 | Liason |
| Lollipop | L | P | 8 | Lollypop |
| Millennium | M | M | 10 | Millenium |
| Millennia | M | A | 9 | Millenia |
| Neanderthal | N | L | 11 | Neandertal |
| Necessary | N | Y | 9 | Neccessary |
| Noticeable | N | E | 10 | Noticable |
| Occasion | O | N | 8 | Ocassion/Occassion |
| Occurred | O | D | 8 | Occured |
| Occurring | O | G | 9 | Occuring |
| Occurrence | O | E | 10 | Occurance/Occurence |
| Pavilion | P | N | 8 | Pavillion |
| Persistent | P | T | 10 | Persistant |
| Pharaoh | P | H | 7 | Pharoah |
| Piece | P | E | 5 | Peice |
| Politician | P | N | 10 | Politican |
| Portuguese | P | E | 10 | Portugese |
| Possession | P | N | 10 | Posession |
| Preferred | P | D | 9 | Prefered |
| Preferring | P | G | 10 | Prefering |
| Propaganda | P | A | 10 | Propoganda |
| Publicly | P | Y | 8 | Publically |
| Really | R | Y | 6 | Realy |
| Receive | R | E | 7 | Recieve |
| Referred | R | D | 8 | Refered |
| Referring | R | G | 9 | Refering |
| Religious | R | S | 9 | Religous |
| Remember | R | R | 8 | Rember/Remeber |
| Resistance | R | E | 10 | Resistence |
| Sense | S | E | 5 | Sence |
| Separate | S | E | 8 | Seperate |
| Siege | S | E | 5 | Seige |
| Successful | S | L | 10 | Succesful |
| Supersede | S | E | 9 | Supercede |
| Surprise | S | E | 8 | Suprise |
| Tattoo | T | O | 6 | Tatoo |
| Tendency | T | Y | 8 | Tendancy |
| Therefore | T | E | 9 | Therefor |
| Threshold | T | D | 9 | Threshhold |
| Tomorrow | T | W | 8 | Tommorow/Tommorrow |
| Tongue | T | E | 6 | Tounge |
| Truly | T | Y | 5 | Truely |
| Unforeseen | U | N | 10 | Unforseen |
| Unfortunately | U | Y | 13 | Unfortunatly |
| Until | U | L | 5 | Untill |
| Weird | W | D | 5 | Wierd |
| Wherever | W | R | 8 | Whereever |
| Which | W | H | 5 | Wich |
A graph is given below to show the most common lengths of misspelled words:
A graph is given below to show the most common first letters of misspelled words:
A graph is given below to show the most common last letters of misspelled word:
Types of spelling errors
When broken down, the types of spelling errors that people regularly make frequently fall into the five main categories listed below:
- Omission – A letter is omitted (example: “knowlege” instead of “knowledge”).
- Insertion – A letter is inserted (example: “truely” instead of “truly”).
- Substitution – A letter is replaced by another letter (example: “jist” instead of “gist”).
- Transposition – Incorrectly ordering/jumbling two adjacent letters (example: “freind” instead of “friend” ). Alternatively, misplacing a letter by multiple positions (example: “britgh” instead of “bright”).
- Grapheme substitution – Utilizing spelling of plausible or identical sounding words instead of the appropriate spelling (example 1: “their” instead of “there”) (example 2: “bort” instead of “bought”) (example 3: “cole” instead of “coal”).
Regular and irregular spelling
- According to research, around 50.0% of English words can be spelled accurately just through the method of sound-symbol correspondence alone.
- This means that the letters used when spelling these words accurately represent the way they are supposed to sound.
- Using the same system, an additional 34% of English words would have just one error when spelled.
- In total, this amounts to 84.0% of words in the English language being almost entirely predictable when spelling.
- If the person spelling can take into consideration additional information such as word meaning and origin, they will be able to correctly spell an even greater number of words.
- Overall, it is estimated that around 16.0% of words are unpredictable to spell, with just 4% of this number considered to be truly irregular.
Impact of typos
- A survey of 1,000 people found that 65.0% of people find typos to be unacceptable (within a range) in their industry.
- 18.7% of people found typos to be acceptable (within a range) in their industry.
- However, 16.4% of people felt typos were neither unacceptable nor acceptable.
| View | Percentage |
| Completely unacceptable | 15.0% |
| Mostly unacceptable | 24.9% |
| Slightly unacceptable | 25.1% |
| Neutral | 16.4% |
| Slightly acceptable | 10.9% |
| Mostly acceptable | 5.1% |
| Completely acceptably | 2.7% |
A graph is given below to show the opinions towards typos in the workplace:
Unacceptability of typos by industry
- 87.9% of survey respondents who work in business support and logistics find typos to be unacceptable in their industry.
- This is higher than in any other industry.
- A high percentage of workers in advertising and marketing (71.4%) and governmental positions (also 71.4%) also find typos to be unacceptable.
- Just 45.2% of those who work in retail and consumer durables reported finding typos unacceptable in their industry.
| Industry | Percentage |
| Business support and logistics | 87.9% |
| Advertising and marketing | 71.4% |
| Government | 71.4% |
| Healthcare and pharmaceuticals | 66.7% |
| Education | 64.6% |
| Finance and financial services | 63.6% |
| Nonprofit | 62.9% |
| Tech, telecommunications and electronics | 61.3% |
| Entertainment and leisure | 51.9% |
| Retail and consumer durables | 45.2% |
A graph is given below to show the unacceptability of typos by industry:
Commonly misspelled words FAQ
Which incorrect spelling bothers readers the most?
- A 2015 study that gave US adults a list of frequently misspelled words found that the grapheme substitution errors “there”, “their” and “they’re” or “your” and “you’re” prove to be most bothersome to readers (46% and 42% respectively).
- However, incorrect spelling of the word “February” has been found to bother 38% of adult Americans, more than any other standalone word.
- Close behind, spelling “definitely” incorrectly irritated 31% of American adults.
- Incorrectly spelling “receive” was also found to annoy 30% of American adults.
How problematic are typos in the workplace?
- A survey found that just 8.2% of employees believe making a typo at work would cause a major problem with their manager.
- 26.6% of respondents feel their manager would be fairly irritated by a typo.
- 40.8% believe their manager would be slightly bothered.
- However, 24.5% believe their manager wouldn’t mind at all.
Do typos matter on a resume?
- In a survey, 79.0% of people said that they would not hire a candidate after spotting a typo on their resume.
- This goes to show that correct spelling on a resume has a huge importance on an applicant’s job prospects.